January 5, 2011
Corporations Have Feelings Too. Cento-Millionaire House member, Darrell Issa (R-CA), announced that he will form a new club on Capitol Hill to protect put-upon corporations from regulatory discrimination. Issa’s ascendancy to the Chairmanship of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee promises to put on display the beliefs and attitudes that earn him a consistent 90+% voting record from the American Conservative Union. In fact, as Chairman of the only congressional committee with “reform” in its title, Issa views the reform of government as akin to deconstruction bordering on chaotic demolition. Imagine, Darrell Issa, arch-conservative-post-structuralist!
Mobilizing his forces quickly, Issa sent a flurry of letters to club member corporations and trade associations requesting his marching orders. According to Politico, Issa’s missives included the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, Bayer, and approximately 150 other club members. As you’ll read below, he sought their opinions on which governmental (read, “Obama”) regulations were especially off-putting. Here’s presumptive Chairman Issa’s letter:
“The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is examining existing and proposed regulations that negatively impact the economy and jobs. In fiscal year 2010, federal agencies promulgated 43 major new regulations. These regulations ranged from new limits on “effluent” discharges to new rules for Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations. The new limits on “effluent” discharges from construction sites will cost $810.8 million annually resulting in the closure of 147 construction firms and the loss of 7,257 jobs. In total, the administration estimated the cost, often referred to as the hidden tax, of the 43 new regulations to be approximately $28 billion, the highest single year increase in estimated burden on record, resulting in thousands of lost jobs. This new burden is on top of the $1.75 trillion estimated burden of existing regulations. As a trade organization comprised of members that must comply with the regulatory state, I ask for your assistance in identifying existing and proposed regulations that have negatively impacted job growth in your members’ industry. Additionally, suggestions on reforming identified regulations and the rulemaking process would be appreciated. Please submit your response as soon as possible, preferably before January 10, 2010.”
Issa’s spokesloon, Kurt Bardella, got to the gist of it in appropriately plaintive voice: “Is there something that we can do to try to ease that [regulatory] burden and stimulate job creation?” he added. “Is there a pattern emerging? Is there a consistent practice or regulation that hurts jobs?”
Bloomberg.net reports that Issa spokesloon Bardella waxed on about the plight of America’s corporate downtrodden, perhaps bringing tears to listeners’ eyes :“Maybe this disdain for job creators is why the current policies in place have failed to create the type of long-term, permanent jobs the American people were promised,” said Bardella. He said the committee aims to gain “insight from job creators who have felt shut out of the policy process so that we have a better understanding about what regulatory barriers are standing in the way of job creation.”
This, of course, ignores the fact that corporations and associations are embedded up to the hilt in the influence game Bardella calls the “policy process.” There is no member of Congress who does not regularly get throttled by business-oriented lobbyists.
Also, as for “job creation,” Bardella apparently fails to comprehend the enormous loss of middle class consumer wealth during our ongoing Dubya Decession, and the consequent shrinkage of aggregate demand for goods and services that then resulted in substantial unemployment and underemployment.
Issa’s Zombieconomy Gang. Furthermore, as head of the Government Reform Committee, Issa will ensure that supply side economics –the GOP clarion call since Reagan – rises once again from its dirt nap. Supply side’s terribly battered right hand man, deregulation, despite its recent massive failures, will become the primary cudgel of Issa’s vitally important committee. In this Issa in Wonderland world, policies that caused the Dubya Decession, especially deregulation, will be revived as its cure. As Paul Krugman and John Quillen say, zombie ideas are hard to kill.
This GOP infatuation with supply side economics of the Laffer variety – at its best, an economic theory of highly limited application – ignores the readily available evidence: government revenue fell and economic progress nosedived due, in large part, to Bush’s unfunded tax cuts (and years of financial deregulation, etc.). Moreover, tax revenues rose at first after Bush’s tax cuts, but only due to a surge in corporate profits, and then revenues quickly dropped. Remember, too, these heralded growth enabling tax cuts have been in effect for seven years, long enough to demonstrate their efficacy, or not. And recall that under Clinton we emerged in 2000 with a surplus, despite what GOP and libertarian supply siders considered a confiscatory tax rate of 39% on the highest earners.
As for the deficit, the Big Lie is that the GOP cares about the deficit. They do not. Their policies are pro deficit, particularly the fiction that tax cuts need not be paid for because the (ignominious) Laffer Curve guarantees that the lower the tax the higher the government’s tax receipts. Here’s some data. Note the explosion of the deficit during the Reagan and Dubya years, after their large tax rate decreases.
| President | Years as President | National Debt at Inauguration | National Debt at End of Presidency | % Increase in Debt Over Entire Presidency | % Increase in Debt Per Each 4-Year Term |
| Jimmy Carter | 4 | $706 billion | $994 billion | 41% | 41% |
| Ronald Reagan | 8 | $994 billion | $2867 billion | 189% | 94.5% |
| George H.W. Bush | 4 | $2867 billion | $4351 billion | 52% | 52% |
| Bill Clinton | 8 | $4351 billion | $5769 billion | 33% | 16.5% |
| George W. Bush | 8 | $5769 billion | $10413 billion | 81% | 40.5% |
Finally, courtesy of Rocky Mountain Institute, is data on GDP growth from 1900 to 2008. Note the refutation of the GOP meme that the rate of GDP growth is always adversely affected by a high tax rate: for example, from 1950 to 1973, a period of what the present day GOP would call confiscatory tax rates on the highest earners, GDP grew 250% in less than 25 years.
In Conclusion.
“The only chance we have to contain this is to vaporize
every living thing aboard that aircraft.”
– Pentagon General, Flight of the Living Dead:
Outbreak on a Plane (2007)
Fight the zombieconomists! Or they’ll eat your social class for lunch . . .